Ideologically frustrated

So.  I am frustrated.  Chad and I have distinctly different ideologies (in all of the major issues: religion, politics, and social issues) from our friends and families.  I like to think of myself as a pretty tolerant person.  Now don't get me wrong, when I was on facebook, I completely got sucked in to the soapbox status updates.  I hate that about myself and that is one of many reasons I'm not planning on returning.  It's unhealthy for me and for my friendships.  But back to my mostly tolerant ways. . . not having any like-minded folks to vent and discuss these things with is so, so crushing. Of course, we know some people that have similar views and we do talk to them but nothing like having close friends to share these things with.  And not having anyone open-minded to discuss these things with turns my tolerance  sour.  I begin to resent those folks that refuse to be civil or even the least bit open-minded to consider that our views might possibly be right or at least as right as the ones they adhere to.  I know that a lot of my predicament mostly is a matter of geography and that I would likely feel less isolated if I were anywhere but here.  But for now, here is where I am and I grow more frustrated by the day.  It makes me resentful of those around me.  How can they be so close-minded? Why do they refuse to try and see alternate world-views?  I understand the ideals they hold dear so why can't they understand mine?  Why must they be so intolerant that I can't even be honest with them about what I really think.  [Sidenote: I was much more free with my thoughts on facebook, again, the dangerously abrasive me that took over.] They barely even know the superficial bits and already shun us.  I just hate it so much.  So ready to get out of this place and find at least a few semi-likeminded friends.

One of those nights I don't feel like a failure!

Chad has class on Wednesdays so I was flying solo.  Fail one, McDonalds.  Fail two, we watched a lot of Phineas and Ferb (with a little Wonder Years for Mommy).  Outside of those two faux pas the night was so uneventful that it's noteworthy.

I bathed the boys, something that is way more work when you have a needy 13 week old baby to simultaneously keep happy.  I got them dressed and got the bath ready for Em.  I bathed her and fed her.

She's always eats after a bath, so she had to be last.  She's taken to cluster feeding in the PM which I'm mostly okay with since she sleeps a long time at night.  However, it makes doing anything with the boys more difficult when I'm solo.  Enter TV time.  She ate and ate but then went to sleep. She sleeps in a pack n play in our room.  We were gifted an amazing one (since I had given away the one I used with the boys) and it had a "newborn napper".  She slept awesome in it from the day we brought her home.  Sadly, she outgrew it and we removed it last week.  Since that time she is hit and miss about sleeping in the regular flat bassinet part of the pack n play (what the boys slept in when we first brought them home).  So, there have been nights she has either had to start the night in the swing or at least ended in it since it has a similar shape but better fit than the napper.  However tonight was a hit!  She went down in the bassinet and I didn't even have to go in and replace a paci once!

The boys finished the show that was on, I read them a book, and they went to bed.  They have gotten out a time or two but for the most part I think they are now down for the night.

And that, my friends, is a successful night.  Though I'm nowhere near super mom rank, I think I may be okay.

Some pictures of my sweets

I've become a bit neurotic (I know, I know, you've known I'm neurotic for some time now but I'm just coming to terms with it) about posting pictures and other information on the internet which is one of the many reasons I'm not on Facebook anymore and have no plans on going back.  Even though this blog isn't searchable on Google, I still don't want my sweets getting out there for the use of others.

But here, for your viewing pleasure are some pictures of my lovelies.

Outside playing after dark. 

One day old.  One funky looking mama.

The boys couldn't get enough of their little sis!

Grumpy and Em

Ready to head home. 2 days old.

Just got home. J is in love!

In her coming home outfit.

This was going to be her announcement picture but Mommy let herself get talked out of it.

To date, the only time she's slept in her crib, she has a pack n' play in our room.

A boy and his cars.

Some little fingers smudged the lens.

All stretched out!

Excavating a triceratops.

L is really bummed he didn't get to hold her first.  Poor guy.

A promised late night camp out in the living room to celebrate the end of school. 

Big smiles after eating.  (That big bump is my nursing pillow.)

The Fog of War

Chad and I are notorious for not waiting for "the day" of special events to exchange gifts.  He purchased our anniversary and my birthday gifts ahead of time and he's already given me two of the three gifts he purchased.  The first gift he gave me was awesome.  It was Jimmy Fallon's Blow Your Pants Off, a cd of music from Late Night.  He hilariously covers several songs in the voice of other singers.  A favorite is the Reading Rainbow theme song as it would have sounded sung by The Doors.  It also has his duet with Stephen Colbert singing the infamous Rebecca Black song, Friday.  As awesome as that gift is, it nowhere near compares with the second gift he gave me today.



Here is the IMDb page, too The Fog of War

If you never see another documentary in your life, you MUST see this one.  Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and one of the country's most prominent "Hawks".    In this documentary, he is at the end of his life reflecting back on the triumphs and more importantly the failures of his life and career.  I have never heard a more contrite and honest assessment from anyone about their failures, lest of all from a prominent political figure.  If we were all this honest and raw with ourselves and each other, our country would be less bound by our arrogance that we are always right and have always been right in our past and are not prone to making mistakes in the future.  Being human, this is an important realization we all must have so that we can hopefully save future generations from making the same mistakes.  This movie is a step in the direction of clarity and truth.  Seriously, watch this movie.  It's available on youtube.com in pieces.  Even if you aren't into politics, the lessons he enumerates apply to everyone but the history and inside look at the decisions that faced the Kennedy administration during Vietnam are fascinating.

So yeah, Chad got me the best movie ever; and you should be warned that if you come over to our house and are here for long enough, this movie may come up and we may watch it.  Just kidding... maybe not but don't rule it out.

Giving into the pressure

With all the crazy stuff going on and trying to get the house back together after the flooding, there just hasn't been enough energy or care in me to worry about my appearance.  Yesterday, I actually left the house with gross hair wearing a shirt with drool/milk curds on it from Emma.  Thankfully breast milk spit up is usually not a massive event and can generally be cleaned up with some help from a baby wipe.  I'm at the point in motherhood that only the really wet massive ones warrant a change of shirt.  Now that I type it out it makes me sound really gross but when you don't have access to your own laundry room and you can't afford to change clothes multiple times a day, then you will understand.  Hopefully it's just not a third kid thing and that I don't actually smell (though I can't smell it).  I'm thinking a makeover may be due soon.  :)

Flood!

Last Sunday night our house flooded.  From rain.  It was about 11 pm on the 3rd and we heard some ominous sounding storms so Chad got up and checked out the weather.  It was a tiny cell right over our town that we expected to move on shortly thereafter and leave us alone.  Around 11:30 the power went off so we set the alarms on our phones so he could get up for work if the power wasn't back on by morning.  At 1:30 am there is a horrible knocking at our door and we both spring out of bed.  The neighbor is yelling and we both immediately think someone is dying (our next door neighbor lost his wife just a month ago so this is fresh on our minds).  Then we hear what he is frantically yelling, "You gotta get out, you gotta get out! Everything is flooding!" He goes on more about how you can't drive down the street because of all the water but that we have to get out.  It's at this point Chad and I realize our feet are wet and that there is water coming into our house from our back door.  We frantically get dressed (still in the dark since there is no power) and try and figure out what to do.  The figuring out what to do part really consisted of us frantically running around freaking out.  I tried calling my dad but kept mis-dialing and selecting Chad's contact stuff rather than Dad's and I was so frantic I couldn't figure out how to even stop the call to get it right.  Because of what the neighbor said, we were both in such a panic that we didn't even think about his advice.  I was on the phone with my Dad explaining the situation and about to grab Emeline's seat so we could get her in it (while also pulling things up off the floor that I didn't want ruined) when it hit me, without any prompting from my Dad even, that this wasn't a life-threatening situation.  We don't live near a creek or river and our house wasn't going to float away.  This wasn't New Orleans and we weren't going to end up on our roof with no place to go and no help in sight.  This was simply a drainage issue and there had just been too much rain in too short a time span and at worst we would end up water in the house but we weren't going to die.  At this point we start to calm down some more and see if we can't find some flashlights and candles as we continue to pick things up off the floor.  After we get things settled, we head out to front porch, which has remained dry, to survey the damage and talk across the cul-de-sac to the neighbors.  Around this time, the rain is letting up some and within the next hour we notice the waters are receding.  It continued to lightly rain the rest of the morning but the flooding had receded and there was just normal drainage everywhere.  The power came back on around 3:30 or so, too.  While talking to the neighbors we found out why the neighbor across the street had been so freaked out.  He had about a foot and a half of water in his house just streaming in his front door.  He had so much water in front of his house that one of his cars that was parked in the driveway was pushed sideways by the water.  The amount of damage to his house and one other house on the cul-de-sac is so much worse than the inch or so of water we experienced.  Our house had damage but nothing compared to those other two houses.  We had to have a restoration crew come rip up all the carpet and dry the walls but their damage was so extensive that they have to cut the walls out from about midway up down to the floor in addition to the drying and carpet.  We just moved back in yesterday so we were out of our house about 8 days.  It may be months for these guys to get back into their houses.  There were two others that had flood damage on our street and several others in our neighborhood.  There was at least one other neighborhood in town that had flooding, too.  We have our new carpet but we are waiting on the baseboards so our furniture is still not back where it goes.  Our kitchen counters are COVERED in books and there is a lot of furniture in the dining room.  Our house had been turned upside down since we converted the playroom into a nursery and had were playing musical chairs with some bookcases.  During the day on the Sunday of the flood, we had just gotten Chad's newly recovered (giant) bookcase in the house and all the books jockeyed around.  We got the other bookcase in the boys room and got all of their books up off the floor (they had been on the floor of our dining room since March!) and the house was looking great.  I'm so thankful that none of those books were ruined since a good deal of them are books that were mine as a kid.  Also serendipitously, at the same time we moved all of the bookcases around, we also moved the stereo cabinet and brought back in the giant speakers that had been on the floor in the garage.  Water did come up about half way the garage floor and it was even less than an inch deep but it would have been plenty to destroy those speakers.  I'm so glad to be back in our house and I can't wait for it feel like home again after we get things back where they go!

Tomorrow Emeline will be 2 months old!  I can hardly believe it.  The whole last week seems like a blur and though she's been with me every day, I haven't gotten the time to sit and play with her as I should.  She is now at the point where she likes to lay on the floor and kick and squeal and grin.  She has her own theme song and smiles whenever we sing it.  It's a variation of a song from Phineas and Ferb and unless you are familiar with the show then it would probably be lost on you.

I wonder when normal will come again.  When it does, I'll let you know.  My new summer project is to petition the Board of Trustees of the town we live in to get on the agenda for the upcoming meeting with hopes of having them re-evaluate the drainage situation of our neighborhood.  Yes, that means I have to speak before the board, too!  My poly sci bones are tingly getting all involved in local government (though that isn't really my chosen area of interest).  I'll keep you updated on what transpires.

We met another Emeline yesterday!

So if you know me very well at all, you know that I fret about the names we give our children. A lot. Even after they are named.  In Lennon's case, for years.  I still worry if we should just call him by his middle name, Beckett.  My misgivings about Emeline's name were related to the pronunciation/spelling of her name.  Her name has personal significance to us as a memorial for my mom and grandfather and her middle name is a memorial to Chad's grandmother.  We pronounce her name Emma-lynn with a short "i" in the last part.  Variations we have heard are Emma-lean (long "E" sound) and Emma-line (long "I" sound).  Not one person had ever assumed it was pronounced the way we pronounce it and always have to be corrected.  Of course, I knew this was likely when we named her and I was mostly comfortable with but it was still an issue for me.

Yesterday we went to a great bakery in Tulsa and the owner's name was Emeline, pronounced and spelled exactly the same way as our Emeline.  She told us that it is a common name in France and that most of the Emelines on FB are French photographers, haha.  Either way, I'm feeling so much better knowing that our spelling/pronunciation aren't far fetched and that it is a legitimate combination of spelling and pronunciation and that while we have a given her an uncommon name, it's not unheard of.  That is the kind of uncommon name I'm happy with.  :)  

She's here!

Emeline is here.  She arrived at 7:56 pm on April 14th.  She weighed 7 lbs. 3 oz. and is 20 inches long.  She is perfect.  Someday I'll get around to posting her birth story but it may be awhile.  I didn't get my VBAC but I'm very happy with my birth experience.  It looks like there were very good reasons why it ended up turning out how it did.

More proof that my old Dr. was lame

I just got an interesting call from the pre-arrival people at the hospital I plan to deliver at.  They were giving me instructions about the pre-admitting procedures and things for my scheduled c/s on Monday. Of course, the c/s was supposed to be cancelled and I took the proper measures to do so when I changed practices.  It obviously didn't get taken care of.  Lame.

In better news, I've been having contractions all morning.  Now they have lessened in intensity and are growing further apart but they have been pretty good all morning.  When Chad gets home we'll get to walking and hope they pick back up.  For now, though, nap time.  I think I'm going to take this time to enjoy the rest b/c waking up contracting at 4 am was pretty hard to sleep through!

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!

Staying busy and taking it easy

Waiting on a new baby is kind of like waiting on a looming natural disaster in the forecast.  You have a good idea of what you should have ready but inevitably something either can't be done until closer to time or it gets overlooked.

Today, I've already had a few contractions but nothing regular or to write home about.  The last one, if it was an actual contraction, was much longer than I've had to this point and it got me motivated.  On my agenda for today was a load of whites and to clean both bathrooms as well as a short trip to W-M that I already accomplished this morning after dropping Jude at school.  After that contraction or stomach cramp or whatever it was, I got those other chores taken care of.  I'm terrified of labor getting started and having to head to the hospital and leaving the house in a less than clean way.  I mean, my house isn't going to be spotless.  I've given up on that for the time being.  We still have too many of our many small projects strung out everywhere for that to even be a reality but I don't want whoever is here with the kids to have to see with nasty toilets and piles of laundry.  So those are the things I'm focusing on.  Tomorrow, I'll dust and vacuum.  These little chores each day are about all I can handle each day, as pitiful as that sounds.  

Jude was out of school Friday and we had plans to meet up with my family Friday evening to celebrate Easter and Chad's birthday.  Well, Jude got progressively lethargic and whiny as the afternoon went on and complained of a headache.  We realized that our plans were dashed when all of his symptoms culminated in getting sick in the trash when we were about to leave (as I think I mentioned in my previous post on his illness, I thought the headache was sinus related and after medicating him for it we planned to continue with our plans).  He didn't get sick anymore until right around bedtime but then proceeded to get sick about 5 or 6 times over the course of the overnight period.  Let's just say there was a  lot of laundry (two sets of sheets, multiple pillows, etc) to be washed on Saturday.  It was some kind of holiday weekend.  Thankfully he didn't get sick anymore on Saturday, after that awful night previous.  He just had a fever on Saturday and Sunday.  No one else in the house has gotten the bug and I hope it stays that way.  

In addition to all the sheets, blankets and things that got washed I got my tail in gear and washed up all of our other laundry, too.  It's rare that all of that stuff is clean at the same time and I'm pretty proud of myself for getting it all done.  Now, hopefully, she'll come while everything is still clean!  ;)

Though there have been oodles of laundry that I've managed to get finished, I've still been taking it easy.  My body is tired of being pregnant and there has been a lot of resting with my feet up, too.  I feel like I've been complaining too much about it.  I don't like complaining about it because I know how lucky I am to be pregnant and to be able to carry a child with minimal complications.  We really are fortunate and for that I am thankful.  Because of this poor Chad has been hearing the bulk of my complaints.  Let's just say that we are both quite anxious to be finished with the pregnancy and to get to hold the end result in these months of waiting.  

All that said, I do hope she's not born tonight or tomorrow.  I just don't think I can bear to be in the same hospital on the one year anniversary of my Mom's death.  Her aneurysm happened on the 10th of last year and she was officially brain dead at that time but her body kept functioning until the 11th (she absolutely didn't want any intervention to keep her body alive so we didn't allow them to do any).  I already have mixed feelings about delivering in the same hospital but I do know that it is the best place to accomplish my birth goals and also to simply have a baby since there is a level III NICU on-site in case the baby would need any help.  It is the same hospital where I had both boys, too.  I just am having a hard time separating what I see as an excellent part of the hospital from the part that I feel failed my mom and caused so much pain for our family.  I will say that none of those feelings of being failed while in hospital with my mom extend to the ICU where we spent our last hours with her (body).  They were exceptional in there and I have absolutely nothing negative to say about them as they did everything they could to make us comfortable while we waited for the inevitable.  Suffice it to say, as anxious as I am to meet this little girl, I just really don't want to do it today or tomorrow.  I think.  So many mixed feelings.  One minute I think I understand what I feel and the next I am completely feeling differently.  Grief is so confusing.